


Sleeping Dragon

by KennaM



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Humor, Introspection, Stuffed Toys, This ended up sillier than I intended
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-11
Updated: 2012-06-11
Packaged: 2017-11-07 03:28:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/426437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KennaM/pseuds/KennaM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint Barton learns something strange about his partner at SHIELD, and isn't sure what to make of it.</p>
<p>
  <em>"She slept with a plush, stuffed dragon, tucked under the crook of her arm. He wasn't expecting that."</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleeping Dragon

She slept with a plush, stuffed dragon, tucked under the crook of her arm. He wasn't expecting that.

Clint hadn't noticed it until they returned to Central from one particularly exhausting mission, when he entered Natasha's quarters to return a knife he'd accidentally packed with his own stuff. It was thick-looking, fat, sitting beside her pillow like a guardian in a child's bedroom. Natasha said nothing when she noticed him looking at it. His curiosity got the better of him, and Clint snuck back into her room later, when he was fighting sleep and knew she wouldn't have any reason not to be.

He learned foremost that Natasha slept deeply while at Central; Clint even getting in the room without a gun going off was proof of this. The assassin slept deeply, actually _asleep_ the way a normal person would be, and almost cuddled the stuffed dragon. Clint wanted to laugh, but he didn't want to wake her up.

During their missions, Natasha slept lightly, a better spy than Clint. Always ready to jump and defend herself. He'd once made the mistake of getting too close while she slept, nudging her to start her watch, and almost had his hand sliced off for it. She slept with a pillow when she could, a knife ready in one hand and a gun not too far from the other.

At breakfast Clint asked about the stuffed dragon. Again she said nothing, but her eyes sort of glazed over and he knew her well enough to know that this wasn't something he'd be allowed to make a joke over. He made one anyway, and paid for it later in the training ring.

Clint watched Natasha as she slept on their next mission, trying not to feel like a creep. He wondered how long she'd had the dragon, if it was something she usually slept with or just a random fluke of timing. To sleep with something like that suggested emotional attachment, but obviously not enough to need it during work. Finally Natasha turned her head to glare at him, and he realized that his staring had woken her up. She really was a light sleeper.

She didn't have the dragon when she first joined SHIELD, he knew that for sure. Back then, Clint had more reason to visit her quarters, under orders by Director Fury to check in on his new recruit constantly, making sure she 'adjusted well' and 'wasn't really a double agent plotting to kill us'. The dragon must have came later, probably once she'd begun to get comfortable, trusting even. As far as a person like Natasha Romanoff could be trusting.

But leaving the dragon on her bed, Clint realized, right next to her pillow even, seemed to imply that there was a level of trust. He couldn't imagine she'd have left out evidence of something so personal, where it could be easily seen by anyone with a reason to stop in, without trusting it wouldn't be used against her. He felt sort of sorry for the comment he'd made. Sort of. 

"It protects me," she finally told him on a flight home, sitting in the back of the plane, both of them trying to ignore the extremely personal childhood revelation Clint had been forced to make earlier that evening. 

"What?"

"That... that dragon doll, I sometimes sleep with. You once asked me why." He could barely remember the question, but wasn't really sure how _'it protects me'_ was an adequate answer. Nevertheless, he nodded and accepted it. Obviously she was trying to open up, even out the field a bit, and he'd take everything he could get at this point.

He made another excuse to visit her quarters when they got back, to confirm that it was still there. He even tried visiting again the next night, but there were too many SHIELD agents nearby and he wasn't even sure that she would be asleep yet. He'd spent that entire day trying to figure out what she'd meant, _it protects me_. That sounded like something someone said to explain a nightlight or a dreamcatcher, or a religious symbol hung over their front door. Not something a professional, trained spy would say about a silly stuffed dragon.

It was only a few weeks before he'd finally had enough with the guessing and felt safe enough to ask Natasha directly what that was all about. They were tied to separate chairs on opposite sides of a dimly lit room, and he kept the question general enough so the terrorists, who must have been watching and listening in, wouldn't know what he was talking about.

Natasha gave him her standard glare, which he could barely see through the gloom. "Here?" she asked back, "Now?"

Clint tried to shrug but he couldn't move much through the restraints. "We're not going anywhere and I'm bored. Besides, you never really answered my question the first time."

With a huff, she finally said "I'm just... I'm not comfortable, sleeping without some form of weapon."

She didn't get any further because the terrorist leader strode in at that point, probably assuming they were communicating a plan in code. Natasha, as usual, managed to get the name of their real target and trick the men into getting close enough for her to knock one or two out, and the fight ended up with her - still mostly tied up - holding a gun to their leader's temple as his subordinates freed Clint. There wasn't much time to talk during their debriefing on the trip home, but sitting in the infirmary in bandages, Clint turned to Natasha and said, "I'm not really sure how a stuffed dragon could be considered a weapon."

Natasha laughed. "He's surprisingly lethal."

"He? Does he have a name?" There was no response.

This sounded more and more like either a silly childish habit that she'd just never managed to shake, or an elaborate joke she was playing on him, but there was the promise of real answers, finally. When they were cleared to leave by the doctors, Clint followed her back to her quarters. She peeled off her gloves on the way, handing them to him to hold, and she pointed to a scar on the back of one hand.

"You remember this one?" Natasha asked, but it was more of a statement. Clint nodded; he'd been there when she got it. A particularly fun assignment in Moscow, one of their firsts together. She pointed out another scar, across her fingers, explaining how she'd gotten that one on a solo mission in Cuba. He wasn't sure where this was going.

The dragon was still on her bed, still by her pillow, when they entered moments later. Clint hadn't seen it in a while, but it was just as he'd remembered it. Natasha surprised him by picking it up and tossing it at him before heading into her bathroom to wash her hands.

"Lethal, huh?" he called after her through the open door as her water tap started running. He could see her smiling into the mirror. The dragon was even more comical looking up close, fat and bug-eyed with floppy wings. He turned it over in his hands, reassuring himself that the spines were made out of soft fabric and not deadly steal, then looked down at the gloves he'd dropped on the floor. He wondered if she'd want him to pick them up.

"I don't like to sleep without a weapon," Natasha said from the doorway, toweling her hands dry, "because that's an easy way to die. And when I'm working, I sleep lightly, so that's fine. But when I get too comfortable in a place..." Natasha shrugged, and Clint couldn't help but feel very strange, standing in her room and holding a fat plush dragon. He wanted to find a place to put it down.

"Natasha, is this going anywhere?" Clint asked, mentally willing her to come take the dragon from him so he wouldn't be caught holding it on the rare chance someone else happened to walk in. She sighed and stepped closer, but instead of taking the dragon, she held up a hand, showing off a scar across her palm. A light knife wound, mostly healed. From getting too comfortable, she explained.

"So, a stuffed animal instead of a knife, is that it?"

"The dragon - did you even check it?"

Clint looked down at the thing in his hands, a slow realizations starting to dawn on him. He poked at the thing, trying to see if there was a knife hidden in the tail or neck, then prodded the stuffing of the body. Feeling nothing, he moved up to the head, wondering what Natasha could have hidden inside, and how she planned to get it out in an emergency. After almost a minute Clint found nothing, and he awkwardly handed it back to her so he wouldn't have to keep holding it.

"Red herring?" he asked.

"Of sorts." Natasha tugged lightly on one of the the floppy wings, then poked two fingers into a hole Clint hadn't noticed in his prodding, drawing out a slender blade. "Always by my hand, but unable to hurt myself with it. Virtually undetectable; even you couldn't find it. Totally suspicious, too - and it doesn't work if you tell anyone, so keep your lips sealed."

Clint stared at the blade as she waved it at him in mock threat. He hadn't noticed it at all in his inspection. The idea was solid, if a bit weird and off-putting. So she slept with a knife, no matter what. Well. That was to be expected.


End file.
